Asia Information Security Community Blog – Risk & Cybersecurity

In AWS cloud contracts (as in life), read before signing

Lawyers say never to sign (or click on) anything without reading it first, but that rule typically goes out the window when it comes to complex-yet-boring end user licensing agreements (EULAs) and other software licenses.

As John Oliver said in his epic net neutrality screed: “If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring. Apple could put the entire text of Mein Kampf inside the iTunes user agreement and you’d just go: Agree. Agree. Agree.”

That read-before-clicking mantra holds true for license agreements from cloud providers as well. For example, I would bet that when many startups — which often don’t have legal departments — sign on for Amazon Web Services, they don’t check out all the verbiage fully. And they should.

In particular, there is a provision in the AWS customer agreement that they really should scrutinize. The contract’s Section 8.5 on license restrictions includes the usual restrictions…